All of them look fantastic. I definitely want to see those on a big screen – and I'll probably have the chance to do so! The art and animation is so beautiful in all three films and with the exception of the big fish, the CGI blends in really well.

So Ponoc is using celebrities to do the voice overs instead of professional voice actors? Very Miyazaki-like. Unfortunately, that's not a good thing whatsoever. The problem with Ghibli movies is that after Porco Rosso, they all had sub par voice acting. Seems they only did it for money and not because they loved the art of voice acting.

I heartily disagree and feel that the usage of real actors instead of anime seiyuu makes the dubs of the Ghibli movies much more unique. And it's not so uncommon for movies, either – see Sword of the Stranger, Giovanni's Island, In This Corner of the World among others. Some of my favorite anime voice acting roles only have a single anime role.

It eludes me why you think that Ghibli did it "for the money" when popular seiyuu (celebrities in their own way, so to speak) in anime and video games are usually used as a point to promote the work and the anime works that don't rely on these actors are usually much less commercial in nature. If you do a bit of research, you can also find pretty detailed interviews and background stories that explain why a certain person was chosen for the role.

As for the "art of voice acting", I personally think that the industry has a pretty big problem because voice acting is a business that – much like Japan's (pop/rock) music industry – heavily relies on the "idolization" of the actors who are also singers, models, appear on stage and hold fan events. Obviously there are many talented voice actors out there, but it would be delusional to assume that it's purely about talent (or "art"), and I believe we would see a lot more variety if that was the case.

All of them look fantastic. I definitely want to see those on a big screen – and I'll probably have the chance to do so! The art and animation is so beautiful in all three films and with the exception of the big fish, the CGI blends in really well.

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